Lately, I’ve been writing about selling options in bear markets. No surprise here as the market is down about 10% in the past three months. This, of course, is challenging for all investors but manageable to those who have achieved the three required skills for option-selling (stock selection, option selection and position management). Market conditions […]

Inverse Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) use derivatives to bet against the direction of financial markets. These are known as short or bear ETFs and will make money if markets decline in value. They will lose money, however, if markets move against the bet. Covered call writers who have a bearish market outlook may find these funds […]

One of the three required skills for covered call writing and put-selling is the selection of the underlying security. Along with this we also must avoid quarterly earnings reports. Since most corporations report earnings in similar time frames (known as earnings season) the number of eligible candidates is dramatically reduced during these time frames. The […]

Alan Ellman reviews his resolutions and the positives for BCI, and continues on towards expectations for 2016: ” This year’s resolution is being thankful for all the support of the BCI community and team. I realize that I could have never done this without your support, thank you because of you my dream has been […]

Selling out-of-the-money puts and using top-performing SelectSector SPDRs can be combined to design an extremely defensive option-selling strategy in a volatile market environment like we are currently experiencing. Using Inverse Exchange-traded Funds is another approach. In this article, we will discuss the former strategy,. When we sell an out-of-the-money cash-secured put we are agreeing to […]

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) offer covered call writers and put-sellers the advantage of instant diversification and generally have a lower implied volatility associated with them compared to individual stocks. Whether we are dealing with stocks or ETFs each security must be evaluated on its own merit before using it as the underlying security. In this article, […]

For the strategies of covered call writing and selling cash-secured puts, we are selling the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell 100 shares of the underlying security. That security can be a stock or and exchange-traded fund (ETF). In this article, I will highlight ETFs and demonstrate a few approaches to funding […]

With the popularity of covered call writing and selling cash-secured puts growing in popularity, we have witnessed the creation of new exchange-traded funds based on these strategies. Over the last few years I have not been a proponent of these securities mainly because they under-perform the overall market and motivated retail investors can do so […]

Most options traders including covered call writers are familiar with exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and many trade options on these securities. Many have also heard of, but are not as familiar with, index options. The purpose of this article is to detail the differences between ETF option trading and index option trading. Definitions Exchange-traded fund (ETF): […]

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